Now winter is almost here
It’s November, news flash, it’s winter!
Very few days have peaked at 10°C, so it’s still autumn…
Anyway, the heating is definitely on. Which is a great time to get a new EPC (Energy Performance Certificate) done.
There’s no reason it cannot be done in the summer, any measurements are done in reverse, rather than heat getting out, you measure the heat getting in. In the UK, that doesn’t make much sense as we tend to protect against heat loss rather than heat gain.
Yawn, so you’re putting the house on the market?
No, definitely not, we’re in this for the long haul as it’s a goodish house (after all, you never figure out what’s wrong with a property until you are living in it) and we like the area. It gives us everything we need and there’s still enough to do to keep things interesting. We’ve got the rest of the hedge to do and…
Back to the point, please?
OK, sorry. EPC. Ours ran out , as per find energy certificate a while ago and there was some really useful information in it. We’ve done almost all it suggested (on the advice of Greenscape Ltd, we’re getting our water heated by solar PVs rather than a solar collector) and have indeed got our energy usage down considerably.
But it’s really a guess whether or not we’ve met the criteria for the next band.
Measuring will help us decide on our next steps.
Why not put it on the market to get a free EPC done for you?
I want a real one done not a sales one. £72 for the south of England is a decent price for someone to come out and assess rather than look at the figures. We’re lucky in having 251m2 but we’re no longer a simple property. The solar cells are very standard but the vehicle to grid is exotic and skews the numbers. Looking at last month, it looks as if we’re burning 300.2kWh more in terms of electricity use but in reality that’s balancing the grid to the tune of 243.4kWh – 56.8kWh is what we’re really spending driving around (about £9 a month or if that electricity were generated by gas, 13kg of CO2 per month).
What do you care, you’re paying for this and getting paid well for the feed in, so what?
I care a great deal about this, not least because the actions each and everyone of us takes, matters.
While COP26 has had the world leaders making promises, I feel it’s people who take the actions that impact the world. I feel I should be doing everything I can. Not because someone is telling me to but because I have a choice to be a positive or a negative impact on my world and the rest of the world.
My car is making a small impact as an 8 year old vehicle. But my house and how I choose to live in it has an impact every second of every day.
Why wouldn’t I want that to be as good as it can be?
(NB: I’m still largely working from home, so the 160kg of CO2 for our car use is a little low. Obviously, like many, we’ve not been using our ICEs very much at all.).
Posted: November 14th, 2021 under 42, Driving off the grid.